Termites cause hundreds of millions of dollars in damage to buildings each year. In the past, and to a lesser extent today, toxicants were used in an indiscriminate manner to prevent termite infestation. More recently, monitoring compositions have been developed to detect termite infestation.
Termite monitoring compositions require the use of decayed or fungus inoculated wood to attract termites. However, decayed or fungus inoculated wood is not entirely satisfactory for use on a commercial scale. In particular, it is difficult to source decayed wood which consistently meets all of the specifications for a commercial product. What is needed in the art is a termite attractant which is readily available in consistent form.
Certain compounds have been identified which cause trail-following behavior in termites. However, those compounds have not been shown to attract termites to bait compositions. U.S. Pat. No. 4,452,793 discloses certain 29-fluorophytosterol termiticides which may attract termites. However, none of the compounds described in that patent are within the scope of the present invention.
It is, therefore, an object of the present invention to provide a method for attracting termites to a composition without requiring the use of decayed or fungus inoculated wood.
It is also an object of the present invention to provide a method for controlling termites which avoids the indiscriminate use of large quantities of toxicants.
Those and other objects of the present invention will become more apparent from the detailed description thereof set forth below.